Color, Color, Color Everywhere! Color Confessions of a Traveling Artist, Part II

Color, Color, Color Everywhere! Color Confessions of a Traveling Artist, Part II

OK, this is the part I agonize over even more than the choice which palette to take on my travels (see part I).  There are only an limited amount of watercolor wells on any given palette.  So which lucky colors will get to go with me to France?

First I start with a warm and a cool of each of the primary colors.  Here are my thoughts, starting with the yellows.  Hansa yellow medium, of course, because it is a cool yellow and plays well with cobalt and cerulean blue for great greens.  It replaced Aureolin on my palette years ago because it is not fugitive.  My warm yellow of choice is always New Gamboge.   My cool red is Permanent Rose and the cool blue is Cerulean.  My warm red is Winsor Red and the cool blue is Winsor or Phthalo blue.  Here I run into my first delimma – should I include French Ultramarine or not.  It is suppose to be the warmest of all the blues which intrigues me but I think it looks a lot like cobalt blue.  It does make great darks but then so does Phthalo blue.  It has bounced back a forth from being on my palette and then getting ousted.  Sad day for French Ultramarine Blue – it stays behind!

Which colors are always on your palette?  If you were stranded on an island, which colors would you absolutely have to have?  These are the six that I could not live without!

8 thoughts on “Color, Color, Color Everywhere! Color Confessions of a Traveling Artist, Part II

  1. Hmmm, I don't think I can help! My colors are quite different from yours and I've found color choices to be about as personal as choosing shoes! What works for her or her or you may or may not work for me…..

    Good luck on choosing your colors! Tough, tough, tough!

  2. Thanks Deborah! I do struggle with colors. Laure I was hoping you would share your favorite, can't live without colors? Thanks Daniel!

  3. Interesting. These are different for the most part than the ones in the book Art Escapes and different from the palette Laure uses in her classes. I think I'll write these down and search through what I have and see if I can match it and try it out.

  4. Thanks for the comment on my blog. Yes I do feed the birds. I put out a variety of food to get a variety of birds. If I were stranded on an Island I would hope to have someone with me that would show me how to watercolor better and have the equiptment. :))

  5. They look gorgeous here, all lined up and ready to go. I happen to love French Ultramarine, but I like both Cobalt blue and FU. I like the way FU is sedimentary.

  6. Ha Ha true to form, I leave tomorrow and I am still squeezing out paints! I decided to take French Ultramarine in my tiny paint-on-the-plane palette just in case. Thanks for sharing all your thoughts!

Comments are closed.

Comments are closed.